PHIL1601 · Complex Problems and Enduring Questions

Perspectives on Art I: Crisis, Courage, and Creativity

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

Ways of thinking, and ways of doing philosophy, have arisen, again and again, in response to historical and intellectual crises. In the attempt to glimpse and conceptualize what is real, philosophy has elaborated and embraced new ways to see and understand the reality (metaphysical and socio-political) around us and the human life that we must live. Understood in this way, philosophy is always a call to courage and creativity. In this year-long course in philosophy, paired with courses on art and literature offered by Professors Burns and Epstein, we will study the history of western philosophy, keeping an eye on the way in which philosophy comports itself in relation to the bodily and the sensual and, in the second semester, more and more explicitly and thematically, in relation to art and beauty. Fall semester will focus on Greek tragedy, the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, St. Augustine's attempt to echo rhetorically the notion of a Truth that concerns itself with time, and political theorists (Machiavelli, Locke and Rousseau) who usher us to the threshold of the Romantic era, where our second semester commences. The pair course structure and the evening reflections allow us the space and time to pursue this intellectual work within a community.